Substack, the GoFundMe-like writing platform?

See the little Substackers, whingeing.

Dec 15, 2022

Read time: about 8 minutes: This week: I’m a bit player in Substack, and, okay, I feel it. It’s all good. Plus a couple of articles on ’stacks from CJR. Next week: How about some Latin. Beautiful Latin.

Share this one with someone, maybe another Substacker.

Almost exactly a year ago, Technocomplex had its first, wholly automated, post: “Coming soon,” it announced. I started the newsletter at my students’ request. They said they would miss the daily emails I sent out during the semester, their first as undergraduate students, and I figured a Substack would sustain connections and ease some small exchanges, too, as first-years turned to sophomores, sophomores to juniors, juniors to seniors and beyond.

It has been worthwhile and fun, too. I started in earnest at the beginning of January 2022. Since that time, I’ve written nearly every week, giving myself a bit of a summer break and a ’stack vacation around Thanksgiving. Thursdays are the publication days, and this is post number 43 for the year. I have two more planned before 2022 dissolves to 2023.

With that many posts for the year, I’m wondering about adding categories to my Substack, as I’ve seen many Substackians do. Forty-three-plus is a bunch to list in a table of contents.

Readership has grown, though I’ve not paid much attention to the numbers. I’ve not kicked off paid subscriptions, either, mainly to avoid the hassle of having another lever to pull and add to the anxiety of meeting deadlines for the sake of those who have shelled out. If I do “go paid” (as Substack, Inc. suggests with great encouragement and enthusiasm), it’ll be just to show support. A tip jar, almost, since the posts will continue to be free. I’d be lying if I said that readership numbers didn’t matter to me, but they’ve never been much of a driver for me. Of much greater importance than reader “engagement” is my own engagement in the project of writing. A weekly schedule and a sense of obligation provide a bit of backbone when I could easily yawn and slack off my pen or keyboard.

Free but consistent is good enough, for now at least.

What Substack is good for. Or maybe who it’s good for…

Today I wrote to two fellow ’stackers, Rebecca Holden and Terry Freedman, who have been exchanging letters, celebrating or perhaps demonstrating the fine art of British whingeing. The letters have been amusing and capture much of the spirit of the whole concept, which Rebecca helpfully described to me in comments as a “sulky mithering.” I wrote an email to Rebecca and Terry as I was idly and slowly considering the idea of conceptualizing the thought of writing this post, that I am writing now, as I write it, while I’m writing it. I said, “Right now, I am finding ways to procrastinate, for most of writing is putting it off, at least for me lately.”

Paradoxically, I think Substack is to blame. To its enormous credit, every morning the Substack universe fills my Gmail account with tantalizing dalliances, posts that promise to entertain or enlighten. In fact, some do not entertain, enlighten, or, frankly, do much of anything else for me one-hundred-percent of the time, but I am charitable and feel a certain allegiance. It’s an obligation, the virtue of constancy in a social media world. A great surprise to me was learning the number of my subscriptions. I’ve just counted them. FORTY-SEVEN! Way, way more than I expected, though fewer than some I’ve seen cross into my readership. Someone had over five hundred subscriptions, an email from Substack told me. Mostly unread, I’d bet, and for that person my little TC … well, it’s but a small grain of sand on a beach of reading opportunities, I’m afraid.

These observations do point out a strength and a distraction of the Substack platform. The platform serves as a mix of writing support, reading, and social media, with the network mainly of other writers or, perhaps more accurately, other aspiring writers. Nearly all Substackians aspire, even though the Substack company probably views most of the aspirational among us as a burden. We do not pay the bills for the company, most certainly, and we have yet to land on — or, as in my case, even urgently desire — the magical paid subscribers that seem to make the business case for Substack, Inc.

The fact is the humble ’stacks are created by people who also are the platform’s main — maybe even essential — readers. My silently mounting list of subscriptions is a teeny bit of evidence of that. It’s growing because of social media-type “engagement,” even though I’m a most unlikely social media type.

Get more independent writing. I recommend The Sample. They send one newsletter sample a day. No obligation. You can subscribe if you like it.

Media empires. And not.

Yesterday, when Substack’s frequent motivational email arrived to ask me “What can media empires look like on Substack?” — well, I ended up not being entirely impressed. That is, impressed by the inspirational message from Substack, which highlighted Bari Weiss and her “hundreds of thousands of readers.” Nice for her, but that’s just simply out of reach for the greater über-majority of us ’stackers, and maybe not even our desire.

Perhaps the disconnect from the über-majority signals that Substack, Inc. is a bit removed from its main and most enthusiastic customers and “creators”— at least through its messaging, maybe through some of its features, like the little badges that caused so much head-scratching and shrugging among the little people of Substack.

The most entertaining part of yesterday’s inspirational email was the comments. Yes, the comments! “Matthew” from

Matt Likes Coffee.

(note the confident period closing his 'stack's title) had the first comment and shaped much of the rest: “Y’all talking about media empires over there, and I’m just chugging along telling 60 subscribers about coffee.”

Matt ended up with many more readers, no doubt. “My bucket overflows,” he commented after nabbing a few. “Getting that media empire one subscriber at a time.”

The contrast of spotlighting humongous “media empires” and the realities of regular ol’ Substack essayists should give everyone pause. What is Substack for? The answer most certainly depends on where you sit. If you’re in Substack’s San Francisco HQ, you have a very different set of criteria than, say, me sitting in a study in Rougemont, North Carolina, or Mark sitting in a home office in Atlantic Canada or Matt drinking delicious coffee at his kitchen table.

That’s not sour grapes. Just a matter of fact. All active Substack members want Substack to succeed. Not all of them define their own success in terms of building media empires or even mounting paid subscriber numbers. I don’t know that Substack, Inc. gets it, judging from the inspirational nudges I regularly get from them.

Journalists and the Substack platform

I won’t go into detail, but two articles from the Columbia Journalism Review tell me of a broad range of desires and intentions among journalists for the Substack platform. These are the established folks, the professionals among the hordes of writers. They probably are more inclined to envision a media empire than most, but their hopes probably don’t entirely align with the company’s execs.

“Digital Platforms and Journalistic Careers: A Case Study of Substack Newsletters” by Shira Silberstein reveals how journalists “use and understand Substack: using newsletters as a (i) career resource, (ii) alternative media model, or (iii) lifeboat. Each of these themes relates to distinct goals, strategies for content production, and conceptions of professional identity.” (The article is a report from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism.) The piece is illuminating because it contrasts with messaging I get from Substack and the shape of success in the corporate version of the Substack world.

An earlier piece by Clio Chang appeared in winter 2020. It asks, “Did a newsletter company create a more equitable media system—or replicate the flaws of the old one?” For me, the haunting analogy for Substack was GoFundMe:

To the extent that Substack fixes something in the journalism industry, it might be compared to GoFundMe—a survival mechanism whose resources are unevenly, arbitrarily distributed, laying bare systemic problems without directly tackling them. “GoFundMe can help us see things we’re not seeing and put money where it would not go,” [CU-Boulder professor Nathan] Schneider said. “Of course, we don’t want a GoFundMe society.”

Do the little writers of Substack want a GoFundMe society? The analogy is worth considering, especially if you’re set on building a Substack-centered writing career.

It’s also an analogy that Substack, Inc. should consider in a board room meeting. There are many, many minor ’stack writers who’d like to find out where they fit in the larger picture. Many, like me, are quite happy with Substack features. Many, like me, don’t know where we figure into the platform that is obviously using us in ways that we’ve already experienced with Facebook and Twitter. So far, that’s been okay.

Got a comment?

Technocomplex